


A Friend in Need

by ScullyLovesQueequeg



Series: Fic Exchanges [1]
Category: The X-Files
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Complete, F/F, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Not Canon Compliant, post-IWTB
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-22
Updated: 2019-12-22
Packaged: 2021-02-25 23:02:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,488
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21893329
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ScullyLovesQueequeg/pseuds/ScullyLovesQueequeg
Summary: After years of nothing, Reyes sees Scully again, but something is different about her, and she doesn't know what.Set in an AU where Reyes didn't go evil.
Relationships: Monica Reyes/Dana Scully
Series: Fic Exchanges [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1687192
Comments: 8
Kudos: 23
Collections: X-Files Secret Santa Fanfic Exchange (2019)





	A Friend in Need

**Author's Note:**

  * For [greycoupon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/greycoupon/gifts).



> I just wanted to put this out there but there is a major trigger warning for suicide. I didn't use the archive warning, because I didn't want to give the whole thing away, but please, please, if you are triggered by mentions of suicide, you might want to skip this.
> 
> This is written for the 2019 XF Secret Santa Fanfic Exchange. The prompt I was given was either a historical au or a post IWTB fic where Reyes seeks out Scully's help. This is my first time writing Reyes, and I'm sorry if this fic is too sad/angsty. I wish I hadn't gotten so busy, I wanted to really do this some justice.

It had been a long time since Scully had treated herself to anything nice. Her mother had insisted that if she didn't start treating herself better, something could happen to the baby she wanted so badly. Scully hadn't wanted to, though. She missed Mulder. She wanted him back. It took a lot of convincing but Reyes finally got Scully to agree on a nice dinner.

Scully showed up wearing the best thing that she could manage, considering the circumstance. She felt stupid, almost like she was going on a date, but Reyes had told her that she was still new, and wanted someone to have dinner with. She didn't really have anyone.

Neither did Scully. She had her mother, but that was it. Mulder was gone. Bill was in San Diego, minding his own family, Charlie was done with everyone, and Melissa was dead. So was her father. As much as she loved her mother, it wasn't the same as having a friend. Doggett cared but she also knew that Doggett had feelings for her. Skinner was the same, but Reyes… she was just different. And Scully needed that.

"It's nice, isn't it? Being treated like you're a person, and not someone defined by grief," Reyes started, lifting her glass of wine. Scully watched as she drained the glass, and looked to her own meal, and the very unappealing glass of water.

"Yes, thank you. It's hard to really find someone I could really just… confide in. Besides my mother, I just have you, Skinner and Doggett. I think you know, as well as I do how both of them feel about me, and it makes for this awkward dynamic that sometimes, I can't handle. But for the first time in a long time, I feel okay. I don't feel like crying," Scully explained.

The rest of the night only got better, with it ending on a high note. Reyes drove Scully back to her apartment building and walked her to the front door. The pair of them shared a kiss, and when Reyes got to her home, she was excited to see Scully at work the next day.

And that was how it began. For a couple of weeks, the pair of them saw each other a couple of times, and Scully felt more and more like her old self. Days weren't so hard, and it was nice to have someone at night to hold her when the night progressed from dinner and a movie to sex.

And then Mulder came back.

Scully was torn about it--she had come to really care about Reyes, and though Scully had really only wanted friendship when they started, she started feeling more than that.

But Mulder also meant the world to her, and she knew that though she liked Reyes, she loved Mulder. So Scully and Reyes went their separate ways. There weren't any hard feelings--Reyes had not considered that her feelings would be reciprocated and that she was merely a rebound. She wanted Scully to be happy.

After the pair of them went on the run, Reyes never saw Scully again.

* * *

If she was being honest with herself, life had become a little on the dull side. The FBI proved to be something that she didn’t believe in anymore—not after what happened to Mulder. After the things she saw, she knew that the world was something that people, on a whole, knew very little about. These thoughts followed Reyes as she rolled out of bed and trotted to the bathroom.

She liked the idea of being an investigator—that never changed. It was the biggest reason as to why she decided to open her own private practice and continue her work as a PI.

The majority of the cases that she took were the typical things that one comes to expect when it came to private investigative work. _Find my cheating husband, find my missing wife. Find my mother, find my brother, find my son. Who is this man that I’m dating? Who is the woman I married?_

None of it was a cause of concern until a woman came to Reyes with a case that would prove to have significance than she expected.

The woman claimed that her husband was killed via spontaneous combustion. From what Reyes knew about it, the scene fit. The woman invited Reyes to come see the scene for herself. There the man was, in the chair, smelling something awful, and completely burned as if doused with gasoline and set on fire.

Naturally, Reyes doubted it, when she first heard. It sounded and seemed too good to be true, but then a thought came to mind: _Maybe I can see Dana again._ It was a terrible thought and one that, if she was being honest, seemed to always be in the back of her mind. But there was something about the case that made Reyes want to act on the desire to see her friend again. Fate was calling.

When she saw the body, she came up with the idea to call an expert. Someone who had seen the strange things that bodies were capable of. Later that night, as she headed home, her thoughts wandered. _Who else would have any idea where to begin?_ Again, she thought of her friend. She saw Scully in her mind so clearly. She called as soon as she got home.

"Hello?" Scully answered when Reyes had settled down and called.

"Dana? It's me, Monica!"

“Oh hello, how are you doing?”

“I'm doing okay. I’m sorry to bother you after not speaking all these years, but I need help. It's something… I think you might be able to help with. It's spooky," Reyes explained. She heard Scully inhale sharply, and she imagined Scully's face when she heard the word spooky--a look like she had stepped in something awful.

"Spooky, huh? It's nice to know that after all these years, that's what my legacy has become. Spooky cases," Scully said, her voice low as if she were trying to keep from waking someone.

"I'm sorry, I just thought that maybe you could help me… I didn't think--I can call Mulder, I—"

"Tell me where you'd like to meet," Scully said suddenly, perhaps fuelled by guilt.

' _If the tables had been turned, Reyes would come running,_ ' Scully thought, eyeing the LED display of her cable box. It was late, but not enough that Reyes had interrupted anything particularly important. The half-spent bottle of wine could attest to that.

* * *

Reyes had requested for Scully to meet her at a coffee shop of Scully's choosing. As she pulled up to the quaint little diner, she spotted Scully sitting alone, looking forlornly into what she presumed was a mug of coffee. Reyes sighed to herself softly and headed over to her, all the while saying,

"I asked for us to meet at a coffee shop. So why did you bring me to this diner?"

"I wanted to show you something, Monica. This diner is the last place that Mulder and I went before I told him that I wasn’t going to chase any more ghosts," Scully answered, turning to look at Reyes as she sat nearby.

Reyes did not answer, nor did she have anything to say in reply to the other woman. If anything, Reyes was a little taken back by her appearance. The Scully that she remembered was guarded, perhaps to the point where she truly embodied the phrase, 'Trust no one,' but there was a warmth to her that her eyes couldn't hide. There was a light in them, a ray of hope, that conveyed a message that even when things were bad, they wouldn't be the end of everything. Now looking at her, Reyes found that Scully lacked this warmth, and the sparkle in her eyes had faded. She had aged gracefully, and Reyes found herself admiring that in her, but the woman she had fallen for years ago was changed. Something worse than losing her son had happened, and she could only guess.

"I am completely done with chasing phantom tanker trucks and wondering if Bigfoot is real or not. Maybe you should have gotten an expert instead," Scully said, her body language stiff. Reyes felt she had made a mistake in asking Scully to help her. She should have just been honest.

Years had gone by, and neither woman tried keeping in touch. If she was being frank, she didn't know quite how. Reyes checked every now and then but got nothing. She knew that being on the run with Mulder was hard, especially with the guilt knowing that she had given up her son. She didn't blame her for falling out of touch. But then, seemingly out of nowhere, Scully surfaced in Virginia, working at a hospital as a surgeon, as though she had never been missing.

"You mean someone like Mulder, then?"

"Yes, someone like Mulder," Scully said, taking a sip of her drink. Reyes smelled cinnamon.

"How is he doing? He was going to be my next call, but these days… no one can seem to get a hold of him. Heard about you helping the FBI out a couple of years back. Why didn't he come with you today?"

The look on Scully's face told Reyes that her question was not expected, or welcome.

“He wouldn’t leave the house,” Scully said, looking at her mug and stirring the contents. It was some kind of tea, and Reyes smelled whiskey. "It's not something I want to discuss."

' _It must be bad if she won’t talk about it and he isn't leaving the house,_ ' Reyes thought to herself, noting the way Scully’s body language had given her away as someone who had something to hide. Just the mention of his name caused her whole demeanor to change.

Reyes had not really known Mulder, and the few times they had interacted, it was not entirely pleasant. Mulder struck her as a dour person and his aura had reflected it. He had been closed off to everyone, and paranoid. Not only that, but the closeness that she shared with Scully had gone. She didn't blame him but in a way, it was his fault.

At the time, Reyes had dismissed his mannerisms and attributed it to PTSD, upon his sudden return from the dead. The Mulder that Scully had sold her was far from the man she had met in person and although she could put up when a lot, Mulder was a tough meal to swallow.

"It sounds like depression," Reyes stated, despite Scully's reluctance to discuss the subject.

“Yeah, we—I thought it was."

"He agreed?"

"Yes, and then did nothing about it. After a while, I felt like my kindness was enabling his behavior. I left him and planned to return on the condition that he get help. He didn't. That was 4 months ago. So, one day, I packed some things and I left. I thought that would be good enough… I lived with my mother for a while, I'm on my own now, a nice little apartment in Alexandria. For a while, it seemed like he was trying. My insurance kept billing me for his therapy sessions, so he was going pretty regularly, and when I saw him, he seemed to be doing better, but then one day, he just stopped."

Scully allowed her shoulders to shrug briefly, before she settled back into her seat, refusing to say more. Reyes considered her words and decided that it was a waste of time to try and talk Scully into helping her.

"I’m sorry to have brought this up then. I needed some help on a case, and it’s something I’ve not seen before. The body is… well, it looks bad."

“How did they die?” Scully asked, trying to hide her growing interest. It was the first time that night that Scully had looked remotely interested in anything, and there was a light that seemed to be present again in her eyes.

“His wife said that he was just sitting in his living room, and then POOF! he went up in flames,” Reyes started, taking out the case file. She handed it over, and Scully looked over the pictures.

“And you want someone to do an autopsy or something?”

“Yes, I wouldn’t be asking if I knew someone else who knew about this sort of thing…” Reyes practically pleaded. Scully continued to look at the pictures, tracing her fingers over the glossy paper, before closing it and handing the folder to Reyes.

“OK. I’ll bite. It sounds like something that Mulder called spontaneous combustion. It isn’t real, it’s probably a result of a person dying and a chemical reaction in the body—sort of like a whale exploding on the beach,” Scully explained. Reyes couldn’t help but smile, remembering when Scully was in labor. The joke must have been lost on Scully though because she did not comment further. She drained the rest of her drink and headed out of the diner. Reyes followed after her, and the pair headed to her car.

* * *

Dressing in her scrubs felt different this time from how it usually felt. Long gone were the days where she would spend nights with Mulder: in airports, in cars, at night, in bars… now she had a set schedule. It was a source of contention for her and Mulder, but now… that didn’t matter. Mulder was his own separate shelf in a closet full of memories. Most of them were good, but some, like the most recent one, were not. It was a memory she wished she could forget.

The soft knocking on the glass behind her pulled Scully from her thoughts, and she stepped out of the room, picking off her gloves and trashing them.

“Anything?” Reyes asked, looking a little too eager. Scully thought back to the body, before answering,

“Well, he was burned.”

Reyes gave her a look that told Scully that she didn’t appreciate the joke.

‘ _I sound like Mulder_ ,’ Scully thought, and this troubled her.

“I know it seems obvious but when I say he was burned, I mean, he was burned… like… cooked, thoroughly. His insides were… cooked. Normally, when someone dies like that, it doesn’t happen but… it seems like the fire started within and spread out, which makes no sense because that’s not how fire works,” Scully said, writing this down in the report.

“What does that mean?”

“That you aren't being told the full story. Did you do any actual investigative work?" Scully asked and Reyes looked away.

"I'll admit I was a bit remiss in that aspect, I was curious to see what happened to the body…" Reyes said, rubbing the back of her head. "But from what I saw, and what I showed you… what does it look like to you?"

"Like a wife who is trying to pull insurance fraud. She could have easily set him on fire elsewhere, waited for him to die and then bring him back home, pose him and call you. Then you buy it, hook, line, and sinker, rule his death something mysterious and then she contests the findings the police had and sues." Scully explained. Reyes stared at her in disbelief and felt her cheeks burning red. She saw through the rouse.

"I wanted to believe so badly… I thought I finally had something interesting going on. ...you don't know how much I've missed you, Dana." Reyes admitted. Scully looked over and considered her in full.

"What did you actually want? I refuse to believe you came to me with this bullshit and really expect me to believe it. Even Mulder was better than that," Scully said, and Reyes sighed.

"I wanted to see you. It's been a long time."

* * *

When they got back to Scully's apartment, Scully took Reyes' coat and got her situated with a glass of wine. Scully took a seat beside her and turned on the TV, but then turned to face Reyes.

"If you just wanted to see me, you could have asked," Scully said after taking a sip of wine. Reyes noticed how small the apartment was, and how lonely it seemed. She noticed that the walls had pictures--mostly of William when he was a baby, but some of her other family members, she presumed. The only one she didn't see was—

"I don't have any pictures of him, because he didn't like taking any. He covered the camera on his phone and laptop. I wish he had let me take at least one before I moved out," Scully lamented as if reading Reyes' mind.

"You get asked that a lot, I presume?"

"No. You just have the same look on your face my mother did the first time she came to visit. She thought it was strange, too. She said it was like a shrine in here. I guess that's a fair thing to say. When I lived with Mulder, we argued about pictures. Mulder doesn't like having any up and I… I like having a few. So we compromised, but when I left, I took them all with me," Scully said, drinking more of her wine.

Reyes recalled their first dinner together and wondered about all the changes that had happened since. Life had seemed to take a nose dive for Scully, and Reyes wished she could take away her pain. Slowly, Reyes reached out to touch Scully's thigh.

"I'm sorry things didn't work out between you and Mulder," Reyes said, sincerely. Scully did not look at her, instead of lowering her head, but it was only a couple of moments before Reyes felt a drop of wetness on her hand.

"I'm so tired. I wish I never left him," Scully murmured, and Reyes felt her heart breaking a little.

"You can still go back to him, though," Reyes said, rubbing comforting circles on her leg. "You were his everything, I'm sure he would take you back..."

"No, see, I can't go back," Scully said suddenly, looking into Reyes' eyes. There was a sadness that threatened to swallow the other woman.

"Why?"

"Mulder is dead."

The words hung in the air, and for a moment, Reyes thought it was a joke. The words sounded unreal to her.

"What happened to him?" Her voice was just a whisper. No, she wasn't close to the man, not at all, but Scully was, and it was clearly having an effect on her too.

"He used to go to therapy 3 times a week. When he missed all three in a row, I went to go remind him about why we weren't together anymore. It was raining. I knocked a couple of times, but when he didn't answer, I opened the door with my key. I searched the house all over for him--everywhere except the basement. As soon as I opened the basement door, I knew. I knew I would find him there. And he was just there, sitting against the wall, slumped over. And I remember just thinking, how could you?"

"What happened?"

"He shot himself. He didn't even say why. No note. Nothing. He needed me, and I abandoned him. But, but… Monica, he didn't want to get out of bed. He didn't want to leave the house. He didn't want to eat. He was losing weight. I didn't know what else to do. I was losing hope. He was bringing me down and I didn't want to lose myself either."

Monica took the news in and mulled it over before she reached out to hold Scully. She felt the other woman's body stiffen under her touch, but eventually, Scully relaxed and cried. Reyes rubbed comforting circles over her back, listening to her breathing slow down.

"I know you were the one who came to me because you needed help, but… I'm glad you contacted me, Monica. I needed you too. When I was grieving Mulder back then, I was doing everything not to fall apart. You were the only thing that kept me going, and when Mulder came back, I know you were hurt. I'm sorry. And now I can't help but feel it's happening all over again. I'm so sorry."

"Please don't be," Reyes said, as Scully sat up and considered Reyes again. Reyes smiled softly. "I'll always be willing to help you. Even when you feel you don't need it. I guess love is stupid like that but it's all we have, isn't it?"

"Yeah, that's right," Scully said, wiping at her eyes.

"I'll be here to help you heal."

"Maybe… that case wasn't paranormal at all, but it was special," Scully said, her eyes on her lap. "It brought us together again. Go easy on her when you expose that woman's little scheme. And tell me how it goes."

Reyes laughed softly to herself.

"Will do."

**Author's Note:**

> Special thanks to:  
> \- [postmodernpromartheus](https://postmodernpromartheus.tumblr.com/) for helping me figure out what to do. You are the reason I didn't give up, so thank you!  
> \- everyone who reads this (yes, even you)  
> \- Grammarly & Hemingway, for being my beta because I can't do anything on time.
> 
> ...and last but not least, Nicole for once again throwing this together. You're a saint. I know a lot of hard work goes into this, but you manage to always keep things running smooth. Thanks a million, kid.


End file.
